Managing block size the same way we do difficulty (aka Block75)

Summary:

In a discussion on the bitcoin-dev mailing list, a user named James expressed support for the Block75 proposal. Some participants in the conversation had suggested that miners might fill blocks with insincere transactions to increase block size, but it was not clear what they would gain from doing so. James argued that once block size becomes too large to propagate effectively, miners would naturally limit how much data they put in each block, finding the perfect balance. He also contended that none of the downsides presented thus far were good arguments against the proposal. Risk of a 51% attack is not unique to this proposal, saying "we could also do that with hardcoded limits" doesn't actually point out any problem with this proposal, and miners already have the ability to add or withhold transactions from their blocks. James concluded by stating that he trusts miners to act in their own best interests, and the proposal simply gives them more options for doing so.Another user named s7r responded to Andrew Johnson's assertion that an attack on the proposal would be easily detectable. S7r disagreed, arguing that while such an attack is not impossible to detect, it is hard to act against. One miner orphaning a block intentionally is very unlikely if that miner acts rationally. It would only make sense if 51% of the hash rate would intentionally orphan it. Otherwise, the miner who intentionally orphans a valid block has to continue to mine one in its place on top of the previous block, and by the time he finds one, his block may be rejected by other miners because they already have a valid block on top of which they have already started to mine. S7r contended that even a pool cannot do anything about it, because the loss is greater. You need 51% of the hash rate to intentionally orphan a block, and all the miners forming 51% need to be colluding and know for sure that everyone will intentionally orphan the said block; otherwise, there's a huge risk of loss for those who do it. S7r concluded by stating that they were not discussing 51% attacks because those are a different topic.

Updated on: 2023-06-11T20:50:39.356645+00:00